


we keep...meeting

by hatteringmad



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Character Study, F/F, Immortality, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:00:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27294586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hatteringmad/pseuds/hatteringmad
Summary: They say that, given enough time, you begin to see the same faces in different people.Shimizu Kiyoko has all the time in the world.
Relationships: Shimizu Kiyoko/Yachi Hitoka
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	we keep...meeting

**Author's Note:**

> For some reason I kept thinking about that one line in "Right Hand Man" from Hamilton, but if it was said by someone who kept being reincarnated to someone who couldn't die, and then this fic happened.

The first couple of times, Shimizu doesn’t even make it.

Her mother tells her when she is five, and she can’t quite understand, still too young to fear permanence. But she begins to, as the seasons continue to cycle, and the crows cawing from the telephone lines disappear and don’t return.

“Where did it come from?” she asks, once she has understood enough. 

“The gods, maybe,” her mother says.

“Why?”

But her mother, though the touch of her hand on Shimizu’s shoulder is so gentle, has no answer for that.

The first time Shimizu _remembers_ it, she is ten years old and racing along the banks of the river. She doesn’t mean to trip, just like she didn’t mean to kick Hana-chan’s ball in the wrong direction, but, well, sometimes things happen. Perhaps they shouldn’t have been playing so close to the river anyway, but, well. Sometimes things just _happen_.

Shimizu’s mother enrolled her in swimming classes when she was six. She is good at swimming; she likes the silken sheath of water around her arms as she pushes herself forward. At ten, she knows freestyle and backstroke and breaststroke and can even manage the butterfly for a couple of metres. Adults always seem to be exclaiming how serious and well-behaved she is, but sometimes, in the water, Shimizu likes to pretends that she is a dolphin, light, fast and clever, only a breath away from propelling herself above the surface, into open air.

The slap of river water against her face is a shock. 

She can’t have fallen that far in, but she bangs her knee on something hard and rough, her hands scrabble, she chokes on a fistful of what feels like mud. And then, when she tries to stand up, because she _can’t have fallen that far in_ , her feet touch nothing and the riverbank is, suddenly, very far away.

Hana-chan’s ball is now nowhere to be seen. The current, however, is cool and swift and deep. It feels, almost, strangely, like an old friend.

There is only so much Shimizu can do.

She wakes in the kitchen at home with a slimy feeling in her mouth.

The microwave clock tells her that is only four-thirty in the afternoon. She went to play with Hana-chan as soon as school let out, at three. Her mother will not be home from work for another hour and a half. Shimizu pulls herself to her feet and stumbles into the bathroom. In the mirror, her reflection is pale, and perhaps a little damp. She watches her own eyes watching back for a long moment. Then, suddenly, the slime in her mouth is overwhelming and she bends over the sink, heaving, the taste of mud thick in her throat, tears welling in her eyes, that first slap of the river still stinging her cheeks, half-gasping, half-disbelieving. 

When it is over, she takes her toothbrush off the mirror ledge, and brushes her teeth and spits it out over and over and _over_ again, until her gums feel raw. The taste of mint burns her tongue, but she doesn't turn on the tap to rinse it out. Her shirt clings to her arms stickily, and she knows she should take a bath. She doesn't. Instead, Shimizu returns to the kitchen and, after checking that she hasn’t left anything on the tiled floor, stares at the cupboards for a long time, wondering if it is possible to start preparing anything for dinner without using...well. 

Shimizu’s mother finds her still standing there when she arrives home at six. She notes the bare bench top and the unplugged rice cooker and, most of all, her daughter, small, quieter than usual, clothes perfectly dry.

“How was your day, Shimizu-chan?” she asks.

For one heavy moment, Shimizu only looks at her. Then she says, slowly, but surely, “I was going to get Hana-chan’s ball, but I fell into the river. And then I woke up here.”

What must have happened, between the falling and the waking, remains unspoken – and, at ten, Shimizu’s words are not quite a statement, but not quite a question either. 

Shimizu’s mother inhales, once, sharply. “Oh,” she breathes.

It is only when she gathers Shimizu in her arms, holding on like she will never let go, that Shimizu allows herself to cry.

Afterwards, Hana-chan doesn’t talk to her for a while, because of the ball and because Shimizu never came back, even though she said she was going to go get it. 

Shimizu doesn’t know how to explain, so she doesn’t say anything. This will grow into a habit – the words stacking on top of themselves in her chest like diamonds, the impossibility of a life she should not but will possess, again and again – until it becomes almost easier, to hide behind the long hair that she begins to grow out when she finds she can no longer bear to set foot past the entrance of the local pool, and then the glasses she learns she needs during her first year of middle school. Of course, children are just as quick to forgive as they are to begrudge, and Hana-chan warms to her soon enough. Still, the seeds have already been planted, and by the time they part after graduating from grade school, Shimizu, quiet to begin with, has developed a reputation for being even quieter.

She joins the track club.

It is reassuring, the hard, red bitumen beneath her sports shoes. She leaps over hurdles, the lightness she used to imagine underwater now lunging forth as she sprints and kicks off and sprints and kicks off. But where the water was easy and forgiving, the metal of the hurdles scrapes and cuts. She begins wearing stockings to cover the scars, unsure whether she finds them unsettling, or relieving. One day, a teammate jokingly compares her to a gazelle, and Shimizu startles herself when her first thought is that a gazelle only runs its fastest when being _chased_.

For the most part, however, middle school is fine. She makes a few new friends, progresses from helping her mother prepare for dinner to actually learning how to cook, is briefly concerned about, then accepts, the mole that blooms on one side of her chin (likely a result of spending so much time out in the sun for track club, her mother chides). The three years flash by without so much as a close call, and then it is time for high school entrance exams. Shimizu isn’t too concerned about them. She is happy in Miyagi, and while she likes track, she doesn’t know if she wants to pursue it as seriously as some of her teammates. In any case, the track team at the local high school, Karasuno, is decent, and the campus is close enough for her to be able to walk from home. She still studies hard though, because she is not the sort to do things by halves, and when results are released, she is pleasantly surprised to discover that she has done better than she expected. Her mother takes her out to celebrate at a restaurant they both like, and between the mouthfuls of ten-don, she considers her options. 

It is not really much of a choice, in the end. 

When the new school year arrives, she dons the white shirt and the red neck ribbon, tucks her hair behind her ears, and makes the short walk along streets she has known all her life, to the gates of Karasuno High.


End file.
